The Director of Technical Services and Compliance is primarily responsible for overall management and operational leadership on all aspects of Food Safety, Quality and Regulatory Compliance management of the company’s operations, as well as maintaining and improving the effectiveness of the Food Safety and Quality Management systems and fostering a culture of continuous improvement while driving fulfillment of customers’ requirements, GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiatives), FSMA and regulatory compliance. This position will provide support to New Product Development and manage department budget.
Reports To: President / COO
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Provide operational direction and overall management for the FSQ organization by understanding and deploying the Misionero vision and business plan, and transforming it into Food Safety, Quality, and regulatory FSMA, Security, Safety, etc. objectives while managing cross-functional interdependencies from New Product, Operations, Maintenance and Supply Chain functions towards those objectives.
- Define and ensure effective communications of Food Safety and Quality expectations to internal and external stakeholders.
- Contracted manufacturing, packing, warehousing and transportation services.
- Stage and Gate process for new products and product line extensions.
- Serve as a key leader during crisis management, which depending on severity of situation, this position directs cross-functional response team to evaluate and determine corrective action, as required to ensure food safety and quality of products.
- Provide guidance, cross-functional leadership and resource allocation to the execution of employee training and core competency development in Food Safety and Quality across all levels and functions of the organization.
- Ensure that FSQ KPI’s are aligned with business priorities, embraced by executive leadership, meaningful, customer-centric, achievable, well communicated and visible across organization from operators to executive leadership team.
- Ensure the creation and execution of routines to periodic review of FSQ performance and associated continuous improvement initiatives at all levels of the organizations, with a systematic and multifunctional approach that engages employees, enhances employees understanding of their impact of their job towards food safety and quality.
- Ensure that internal and external laboratory capabilities are in place and validated for all FSQ assurance activities impacting ingredients and finished products conformance.
- Lead implementation and execution of a comprehensive and robust FSQ internal and 3rd party audit program across all manufacturing and supply chain operations to verifying compliance to all applicable regulations and conformance with customer and GFSI requirements.
- Define expectations and provide overall direction and leadership to Food Safety Performance Teams and Food Safety Leadership Team, as the main mechanism to deploy Food Safety objectives, review of Food Safety performance and periodic report to executive leadership team.
- Coach FSQ leaders and staff, while providing development opportunities to allow staff to increase their skills, grow professionally and that supports retention of key contributors.
- Develop highly successful teams, through effective mentoring, motivating and empowerment.
- Provide leadership and performance feedback on regular basis to staff.
- Manage budget.
- Travel as required to multiple locations.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree.
- 10 + years of relevant technical, quality and food safety experience in consumer products organization, with a demonstrated track record of accomplishments.
- 10+ years of managerial and leadership experience within a Quality Assurance and Food Safety function in the food industry.
- Current knowledge of regulatory requirements (FDA, USDA, CDFA, FSMA, etc.).
- Working knowledge of Microsoft Office products (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.).
- Outstanding leadership and cross-functional team building skills.
- Ability to lead teams through considerable change, by inspiring confidence and achieving results.
- Ability to problem-solve quickly and effectively when faced with difficult and complex issues.
- Ability to multi-task projects and provide clear direction to team members.
- Bilingual English – Spanish a plus.
Working Conditions Working conditions described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Ability to stoop, kneel, bend at the waist and reach on a daily basis. Able to sit and work at a computer keyboard for extended periods of time. Lift and move up to 10 - 20 lbs.
